Behind the firewall: newsletter content can thrive in enterprise networks.

Firewalls may secure enterprise computer networks from the outside world, but they can also obscure the new information management practices emerging behind them--practices applied even to content from outside the enterprise.

Newsletters delivered in electronic form are being combined, regardless of source, with regional newspapers and real-time newswires, trade publications and market research reports. In some cases, it is even being refined editorially. At the margin these practices are beginning to collide and compete with newsletter publishing itself.

In a presentation to NEPA's December 1999 conference on electronic marketing in New York, Gene Fuller, vice president of business development at Phillips Business Information, explored these issues. In this and his previous position at McGrawHill's Aviation Week Group, he has watched the electronic delivery of newsletter content accelerate for more than seven years.

Multiple points of entry

To meet subscriber demands, he explained, Phillips employs "multiple points of entry." As direct delivery channels, these include traditional online, internet web and e-mail, and Adobe Acrobat .pdf attachments. Noteworthy is a Phillips-branded General User Interface installed behind several subscriber enterprise firewalls, embedded in their intranets. This enables Phillips to distribute its newsletter content fully intact, uncombined with other sources and unrefined editorially.

Third-party channels include such aggegator-distributors as news filter vendors NewsEdge, SageMaker and Wavo; traditional wire and online services like Dialog, Dow Jones, IAC, LexisNexis and Reuters; and upstart newcomers like Northern Light and Powerize. In addition, Phillips will deploy any combination of these delivery platforms--in principle, whatever subscriber organizations specify.

Other newsletter publishers report similar initiatives. For its seven titles, Aviation Week Newsletters at McGraw-Hill employs five formats and is looking at several others as demand for them develops, according to publisher Stephen Munro. Under site license agreements that now cover almost half its revenues, he adds, enterprises are allowed to "slice, dice and mix" its content with other sources, in whatever format, provided only that copyright is observed.

Big push to put content on intranets

In its stable of delivery platforms, commNOW includes the internet-based html. format. This enables it to incorporate graphic-intensive advertising and at the same time to maintain the look and feel of a print newsletter. Andrea Knotts Bona, publisher at commNOW, sees "a big push to put content on corporate intranets," in effect to adopt internet software protocols as the standard delivery format.

She also notes a trend to centralize information collection in resource centers and corporate libraries and in the end to encourage site license subscription agreements.

Enabling the information management practices--increasingly applied to newsletter content--are an expanding array of new technologies, which include:

* ActiveKnowledge from Autonomy, www.automony.com

* BullsEye from IntelliSeek, www.intelliseek.com

* E-Portal Suite from Viador, www.viador.com

* Knowledge Retrieval from Verity, www.verity.com

* Plumtree Server from Plumtree Software, www.plumtreesoft.com

* Semio Taxonomy from Semio, www.sernio.com.

Combining content regardless of source

Deploying these technologies in corporate intranets and in what are more broadly defined as Enterprise Information Portals, subscriber enterprises are combining content regardless of source. Not that such systems can't deliver newsletters fully intact. Not that recipients can't configure their desktop computers to receive them in this fashion. But as SageMaker News Machine product manager Jim Geanakos (www.sagemaker.com) says, the utility of the filtering capabilities of these technologies is thereby lost. The productivity returns from recipients tailoring the news to their specific interests, in other words, are creating powerful incentives to combine content indiscriminately into one stream of information.

Certain enterprises not only combine but refine the content they receive--categorizing it by subject matter; summarizing it to highlight significant points; and incorporating it with internal sources of news, knowledge and comment to relate it specifically to enterprise interests.

The corporate communications office of United Technologies, Fuller explained, produces a daily "newsletter-like" service distributed across company divisions and down several levels of management. For similar purposes, MCI Worldcom employs SageMaker News Machine at three different locations, configured to distribute Warren Publishing's Communications Daily and Phillips' telecom service, among other sources.

"Editorial facilities management"

By the end of his NEPA presentation, Fuller was wondering if these developments don't reflect a trend toward some form of editorial "facilities management." As an example he cited Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Lone Buffalo (www.lonebuffalo.com). Founded by a former Detroit News journalist, Dave Farrell, it "specializes in the custom delivery of news and information to Fortune 500 companies."

Lone Buffalo, according to its website, uses the "latest software tools to gather the news" (referred to as NewsIntelligence Software in the accompanying diagram). It draws from all the major wire services, all major U.S. and many foreign and a "large volume of specialty and trade" publications--including Phillips' defense and Aviation Week Newsletters' aerospace titles. To this content, its editors apply their "news judgment and common sense [to] eliminate the duplication and irrelevant news" that are often received with "automated news services," to deliver only what subscribers need.

The resulting products consist of headlines, story summaries, links to the full stories and searchable story archives. For Boeing Company, this consists of "a comprehensive morning newsclip sheet" delivered to more than 150,000 employees worldwide. Receiving similar services are such accounts as Federal Express, Ford Motor, Gateway and Visteon.

To Fuller the consulting arms of the major accounting firms also appear to be positioning themselves to the same end. For its consulting clients and client prospects, PricewaterhouseCoopers produces a series of free, publicly available services--among them TelecomDirect (www. telecomdirect.pwcglobal.com). Drawn from lite versions of commNOW, Phillips and Warren content, among other sources, its coverage is organized into three "channels": TelecomBUZZ, TelecomMANAGEMTN, and TelecomTECHNOLOGY. Each can be customized by the individual recipient to focus on stories, for example, about just the industry's wireless segment.

In the 1998 launch under the name Telecom Insider, Point-cast's "push" technology was used to force-deliver the content to subscriber desktops. A year ago, an internet web site was adopted, supplemented six months later by weekly and just recently by daily force-delivered e-mails, under the promotion slogan "News You Can Use."

Elsewhere within PricewaterhouseCoopers, industry practice groups employ similar editorial techniques to produce more robust services for their internal use. While not yet directly available to the firm's clients, one day they may be, if Fuller's speculation proves out.

Not to be outdone, Anderson, Ernst & Young and KPMG are undetaking similar initiatives.

Content tailored to each account's specific needs

Finally, as another example, Fuller acknowledged that even a technology vendor like Sage-Maker might turn to facilities management. It already produces an Information Management System that enhances the relevance of content retrieved from reference information databases. Based on an index-thesaurus "taxonomy" of industry terms, this is tailored to each account's specific needs and use of industry terminology. Theoretically this "relevance engine" could be included in the news filter embedded in its News Machine technology.

As print communications of all kinds migrate from paper to desktop screens, newsletter publishing has been pressed to adopt and integrate many new practices. Most visibly, frequently hand-in-glove, site license marketing and sales now drive circulation efforts; internet web and e-mail become the distribution channels of choice; and new methods of producing content undergird the editorial process.

Representing a long-term challenge to newsletter publishers are the new information management practices emerging behind enterprise firewalls--and the application of editorial talent to implement such practices.

Newsletter publishers nicely positioned

Already employing and accustomed to managing individuals with finely honed editorial skills, newsletter publishers may find opportunities to take over such operations through facilities management agreements--and in other ways to pursue what has always been the mandate of newsletter publishing: to gather, report and evaluate what's new in the worlds they cover.

Under the name AccessNews, Stanley W. Stillman has developed a system to customize content to an individual recipient's specific interests. Integrating advanced technology with traditional newsroom editing and library indexing practices, it enables newsletter publishers, among others, to take advantage of Enterprise Information Portals. He recently represented the Fax Focus service bureau to the newsletter publishing industry. Accounts included National Journal and its 5-page, 1,300-subscriber daily newsletter, Congress Daily. He previously directed the marketing and sales of Bio World Today, an online service and daily fax-delivered newsletter. He has also conducted market research and product development studies for such clients as Dialog, Federal Filings, The Financial Times, Market News Service, Media General, and United Newspapers.